In the pharmaceutical industry the manufacturing process of medical products, including chemically based as well as biologically based medical products, often includes filtering out of the product, which is present in a suspension in form of solid substance.
Discontinuous/batch-wise filter processes are usually used, because of high standards regarding product quality as well as cleanness, the possibility for cleaning, and the possibility for inspection of the filter device(s), in the pharmaceutical industry. In this respect, however, there may be a disadvantage of a reduced productivity which results from a low ratio between productive phase to non-productive phase.